NATO Divided as US, Britain Oppose Ukraine Peace Efforts

The Munich security conference is showing NATO increasingly divided, in pretty stark terms, on the ongoing Ukraine Civil War, with British and US officials being more and more public in their objections to French and German efforts to broker a peace.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond insisted his nation won’t accept any ceasefire deal that recognizes the gains of the eastern rebels in recent days, a puzzling stance since Britain is not directly involved in this war.

US officials are doing the same, with hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – SC) spending the weekend at Munich railing against the peace efforts as “turning their back” on the Ukrainian military, which the administration is considering arming to escalate the war.

With the rebels overwhelmingly ethnic Russians, the US seems keen on turning Ukraine’s Civil War into a US-Russia proxy conflict, insisting they can throw enough arms at Ukraine’s military to defeat the separatist rebels.

After the last ceasefire held for about three months, Ukraine launched a full-scale offensive on the rebels last month. The offensive went poorly, and now the rebels are taking more territory.

For the Poroshenko government, the question seems to be whether they will be in an even worse bargaining position now, having refused the September reforms that likely would’ve ended the conflict, and are stuck with the choice of either starting another ceasefire in a worse position than they had in September, or gambling that US arms can change the battle more in their favor before they stop.

Clearly Poroshenko is only interested in a ceasefire because his troops are currently losing in the field. Equally clearly, any ceasefire would be used (again) by the Kiev regime forces as a chance to re-arm and re-equip for another offensive, probably with US/NATO supplied arms next time.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond insisted his nation won’t accept any ceasefire deal that recognizes the gains of the eastern rebels in recent days, a puzzling stance since Britain is not directly involved in this war.

Wow these guys are really in Danzig '38 mode. I wonder whether Munich was suggested by EVIL ACTORS to trigger the Pavlovian reflex arcs?

The munich agreement wasn't a bad thing on its face because it allowed Germans to choose which country they wanted to live in. However Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia presumably to stop it falling into other hands and that deeply annoyed the British government.

Nah; just the Brits still dreaming that it is 1913; the year before these toothless tigers lost their "empire" forever. Could'nt beat Germany in WW1; nor in WW2, but that never stopped their dreaming of the days of Victoria.

Actually Gen. Breedlove seems to want to compete with the crazy, demented General Curtis LeMay, who would have nuked the Soviets with 50 nuclear bombs during the Cuban missile crisis, if JFK hadn't stopped him.

The pro-Russia rebels would not be going all-out for expansion and conquest if they did not have the full blessing of Putin, which means that Putin is seriously considering the option of equipping the rebels for a grand invasion of Kiev, with the grand ending being a regime change back to a pro-Russia democracy.

The pro-Russia rebels would not be going all-out for expansion and conquest if they did not have the full blessing of Putin, which means that Putin is seriously considering the option of equipping the rebels for a grand invasion of Kiev, with the grand ending being a regime change back to a pro-Russia democracy.

Awesome. Let's hope it spells the end of NATO once and for all. Not really a big surprise that the warmongering UK/USSA not interested in peace plan…UK it seems has a perpetual beef with Russia going back centuries for some reason.
Porky needs to stop killing his own people, as we like to say about other leaders.

Putin's supporters are increasingly frantic! This is the second day in a row that Mr Ditz has tried to claim that Ukraine rejected an earlier ceasefire offer when we all know that it was the mercenaries who refused to allow the people of the area they occupy to take part in the Ukrainian election, a precondition of the settlement. The usual Israeli tactics: break your promises and then blame the other side. "What a nasty shopkeeper! I was perfectly willing to buy the goods, but the shop tried to force me to pay for them"!
The US and UK are simply giving France and Germany backup. The latter two are speaking softly, Obama is carrying the big stick and by adding its voice to Obama's, the UK prevents this being hyped into an EU – US split. Hyping it into a split just shows how weak Putin's friends think he is.
And, of course, the more people hype all this as a victory for Putin, the more the US is forced to intervene, simply to protect its superpower status.